On November 21 Washington sent an urgent, confidential letter to Lee, exhorting him to bring his brigades from New York to help defend New Jersey, a task beyond the scanty powers of his own shrinking force. He was particularly worried that Howe might try to grab Philadelphia. In sending this letter, Joseph Reed had the temerity to slip into the dispatch satchel a secret note of his own to Lee. This blunt message suggested that Washington’s personal staff had lost faith in him and viewed him as a vacillating leader. “I do not mean to flatter nor praise you at the expense of any other,” wrote Reed, “but I confess I do think that it is entirely owing to you that this army and the liberties of America . . . are not totally cut off.” He then delivered a damaging assessment of Washington: “Oh! General—an indecisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes that can befall an army.” In an act of outright treachery against Washington, Reed suggested to Lee that “as soon as the season will admit, I think yourself and some others should go to Congress and form the plan of the new army.”³⁴

At the end of November, Washington was busily at work in New Brunswick when he tore open a sealed letter that Charles Lee had sent to Reed, who was then conferring in Burlington with Governor William Livingston of New Jersey. The letter shocked him on two accounts. The impertinent Lee revealed that he was disobeying Washington’s order to bring his army to New Jersey and instead was sending two thousand men assigned to General Heath, then protecting the Hudson Highlands. In one line Lee echoed Reed’s secret letter, stating that he agreed with Reed about “that fatal indecision of mind which in war is a much greater disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage; accident may put a decisive blunder in the right, but eternal defeat and miscarriage must attend the man of the best parts if cursed with indecision.”³⁵ Washington realized that Lee was quoting Reed.

On November 30 Washington, deeply injured, penned a note to Joseph Reed that was a masterpiece of subtle accusation. He included a copy of Lee’s letter and wrote:

Dear Sir: The enclosed was put into my hands by an express from the White Plains. Having no idea of its being a private letter, much less suspecting the tendency of the correspondence, I opened it, as I had done all other letters to you . . . upon the business of your office . . . This, as it is the truth, must be my excuse for seeing the contents of a letter which neither inclination or intention would have prompted me to. I thank you for the trouble and fatigue you have undergone in your journey to Burlington and sincerely wish that your labors may be crowned with the desired success. My best respects to Mrs. Reed.³⁶

Washington knew perfectly how to wield silence as a weapon. The letter was conspicuous for what it omitted, not for what it said, allowing Reed to imagine Washington’s wrath rather than experience it, leaving him in a torment of uncertainty. The refusal to berate Reed only shamed him more. By not fulminating against Reed, Washington concealed what he knew about his machinations with Lee, a cunning device he employed many times in his career. And his response showed how highly he regarded the gentlemanly code of honor. Before anything else, he wanted to account for having opened and read the letter, lest it seem a wanton violation of privacy. It was a mark of Washington’s psychological subtlety that he sent a note of apology to a man who owed him an apology. Finally, by alluding to Reed’s taxing journey and sending regards to Mrs. Reed, Washington stressed that he wouldn’t stoop to anger in the face of provocation.

Upon receiving the letter, Reed tendered his resignation to Congress, but Washington got him to revoke it. Washington did not ask for a direct response to his letter; nor did he request a talk. Instead he resumed a civil, if guarded, relationship with Reed. The two exchanged many letters without referring to the episode, as Washington waited for the younger man to broach the subject. On March 8, 1777, Reed finally referred to the incident and told Washington that he had tried futilely to retrieve his original letter to Charles Lee. Disingenuously, he said there was nothing in the letter “inconsistent with that respect and affection which I have and ever shall bear to your person and character.”³⁷ Reed made further efforts to repair the relationship, but Washington didn’t bury the hatchet until June 11, 1777, when he sent Reed a conciliatory letter. He wasn’t a man who rushed to forgive, but he didn’t hold grudges either. He told Reed that it wasn’t the criticism of his behavior that had stung him so much as the devious method: “True it is I felt myself hurt by a certain letter, which appear[e]d at that time to be the echo of one from you . . . I was hurt, not because I thought my judgment wrong[e]d by the expressions contained in it, but because the same sentiments were not communicated immediately to myself.” Washington signed the letter “Your obedient and affectionate” George Washington.³⁸

Washington never revealed to Lee his knowledge of the secret correspondence, and Lee’s behavior toward Washington grew ever more imperious. Headquartered in Peekskill, New York, he admitted to Washington in late November that he had ignored his orders to proceed to New Jersey: “I cou[l]d wish you wou[l]d bind me as little as possible . . . from a persuasion that detach[e]d generals cannot have too great latitude.”³⁹ Instead of sternly reprimanding Lee, Washington entreated him to bring his five thousand men to New Jersey, but Lee kept ignoring his requests in an infuriatingly cavalier manner. Washington at last had no choice but to lead his dwindling army across the Delaware River into Pennsylvania. He also began a low-key campaign to discredit Lee in the eyes of Congress—his political style always hinged on fine gradations—telling John Hancock in early December, “I have not heard a word from General Lee since the 26th last month, which surprises me not a little, as I have dispatched daily expresses to him desiring to know when I might look for him.”⁴⁰ At last Lee and his men crossed the Hudson and began moving south through New Jersey, albeit at a glacial speed.

On the morning of December 13, General Charles Lee received a well-merited rebuke to his overweening vanity. He had spent the night at an inn near Basking Ridge, New Jersey, enjoying the company of a woman of easy virtue. In an elementary error, he chose a spot for this tryst three miles from the safety of his army. Colonel William Harcourt, a British cavalry officer heading a team of seventy British dragoons, learned of Lee’s whereabouts from local Tories and surrounded the inn. Lee had just composed his acerbic letter about Washington to General Gates when he spied British horsemen outside the window and gasped, “For God’s sake, what shall I do?”⁴¹ The widow who owned the inn tried to conceal Lee above a fireplace as bullets ripped through the windows. After twenty-two-year-old Banastre Tarleton, later known for bloodthirsty tactics in the South, threatened to burn down the inn, Lee surrendered in slippers and a filthy shirt to the derisory cheers of his captors and a mocking trumpet blast. To make his degradation complete, the British didn’t allow him to don a coat or a hat in the wintry weather. After all of his abrasive lectures to Washington, Charles Lee hadn’t known how to protect himself, and his embarrassing capture proved the punch line of a grim joke. He would spend sixteen months in British captivity.

Whatever his misgivings about Charles Lee, Washington had no time for schadenfreude and could only regret the loss of an experienced general. It angered him that the capture was “the effect of folly and imprudence,” as he privately told his brother Samuel, but he was in no mood for settling old scores.⁴² Perhaps one side of him was relieved at the removal of a long-standing irritant. “I feel much for his misfortune,” Washington wrote to a Massachusetts legislator, “and am sensible that in his captivity, our country has lost a warm friend and an able officer.”⁴³ One again marvels at Washington’s perfect pitch. He may sometimes have been indecisive as a military leader, as Joseph Reed had alleged, but he always displayed consummate skills as a politician.